


Heartbreak World

by EveryDayBella



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: AU, Angst, Domestic, Home, Leaving Home, M/M, Rating may go up, Recreational Drug Use, Roadtrip, Shotgunning, but they love each other - Freeform, great american roadtrip, hopefully, stars management is garbage so they got themself traded, to make home somewhere else
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-15
Updated: 2019-01-25
Packaged: 2019-10-10 11:57:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17425460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EveryDayBella/pseuds/EveryDayBella
Summary: Jamie and Tyler are traded together, but that doesn't mean the journey back will be smooth sailing.





	1. Let's All Pack Up and Move This Year

**Author's Note:**

> So I wrote this fic back when fucktard Lites first opened his mouth about Jamie and Tyler asking for trades and then winning a Stanley Cup there. This fic about the path there has been floating around in my mind ever since. I can't promise how often it will update. unbeta'd so keep that in mind. Title from the Matt Nathanson song of the same name.

**1\. Let's All Pack Up and Move This Year**   


 

They leave early in the morning. The sun hasn’t yet begun to rise, even the stars, dim as they are in Dallas, haven’t faded out yet. There’s coffee in both cupholders, but he knows Tyler probably won’t drink his and instead sleep until the grey light of dawn begins showing up. 

 

They don’t take much and the house, this brand new house they haven’t even been living in for a year yet looks weird with all their important stuff in storage and the furniture covered in white drapes. The kitchen is bare. Everything seemed to echo with how empty it is, with the way it had felt since last December. 

 

Tyler yawns, his eyes droopy and barely contained curls falling over his foreheads. He’s standing in their living room after finishing loading a few things into the car. He looks smaller than he really is and more than a little lost. There’s a pang of something sharp and painful in Jamie’s chest, an echo and an answer all the same. 

 

He approaches and softly draws Tyler into the protective circle of his arms, for all the good it had done him so far. He had promised six years earlier when he first fell in love with a pissed off and yearning Tyler that had been dropped into his lap that he would make sure Tyler always had a place to call home. And he had managed to keep that promise for five years. 

 

Five wonderful, awesome, terrible years. 

 

Tyler sank into his arms whether out of exhaustion because for the hour or something else he didn’t know. He pressed a fluttery kiss to Tyler’s curls and let the silence envelope them. It felt heavy to Jamie, like it was all pressing in on them and suddenly he just really wanted out. 

 

“I’m sorry.” Jamie mummers.

 

“It’s not your fault.” Tyler pulls away, straightens up, looks up with all that beautiful, burning passion in his brown eyes that levels Jamie in their wake. “This isn’t your fault. This is just us picking us for once and it's not going to work if you carry this regret or whatever around, okay? Just please…” Tyler pauses although he can see the words right on the tip of Tyler’s tongue. Jamie squeezes his arms in silent encouragement. 

 

“Please pick me. Okay, you are not the only one who is here and I can’t do this again without you. I need you with me, not up in your head. Okay?”

 

His eyes are shining with something wet, something dangerously close to falling. Jamie cups his cheeks and bends to kiss those eyelids. Tyler isn’t wrong. This is the choice they made, to leave Dallas and their team when it was made clear they weren’t wanted anymore. They were in this together. “I’m always going to pick you Tyler.”

 

“Then that's all I need.” Tyler smiles softly, fragile in the dim light. Jamie kissed him once, softly, wanting him to know that this was everything he wanted in life. Tyler, and the dogs, and a dumb cat. Anything else could then be home. 

 

They say their goodbyes for now to a home they barely got a chance to know, load up the dogs into the back of the SUV with the cat in a crate. Jamie gets behind the wheel, Tyler on the passenger side. The whole thing is anti-climatic. Jamie pulls the car out of the driveway, Tyler loops his fingers through his on the center dash, and that was that. Home is behind them.

 

* * *

  
  


Tyler sleeps the pre-dawn dark hours away, leaning against the glass of the window. The dogs shuffle occasionally in the back, but mostly it's dark and lonely with too much space to think. So much in the rearview mirror to avoid and too much in the future to not be anxious about. He doesn’t dare turn up the radio and wake up Tyler so Dallas and Fort Worth slipped away as everything became slowly flatter and more rural. 

 

Jamie has never driven this far out of the metroplex. There had been no need to, but Tyler had gotten the idea to drive west toward their new city and road trip it, just the two of the them and the animals. They aren’t on a strict schedule and had plenty of time to get where they were going. Jamie hadn’t been on board at first, but the thought of a large block of time, just him and Tyler had started to sound good the longer it sat. It been one of the worst years of Jamie’s life and even just turning occasionally to see Tyler sleeping peacefully in the seat next to him is starting to feel like a balm for his soul. 

 

The sun turned the sky from inky black to a pale washed out blue before Jamie decides to stop. They’re outside some long forgotten town lonely on a vast and mostly empty prairie. If Jamie stopped and thought about it it was a little creepy. There’s a single two pump gas station on the side of the road that he pulls into. The pumps are so old that they don’t have pay at the pump. Jamie shakes his head and reaches over to brush his knuckles over Tyler’s cheek. His eyes flutter open soft and cloudy. Jamie almost wishes he could take a picture to keep forever. 

 

“I gotta go inside and pay. Be right back.” Tyler moans and nods and Jamie left him to wake up for the day. 

 

Tyler’s SUV is a monster and surprisingly comfortable, but it still feels good to get out and stretch after a couple of hours. Inside the little convenience store is a single, grizzled looking man in his fifties reading a newspaper. He grunts in reply to Jamie when he paid for the gas and didn’t say anything else. 

 

Looking at the pre-packaged donuts and candy bars gave Jamie a moment of inspiration. “Hey, there anywhere to get breakfast around here?”

 

“In town.” The man said in an accent that Jamie honestly thought only existed in the movies. “Down that street. Quarter mile.”

 

“Thanks.” Kernling that information away Jamie goes back outside. Tyler has gotten the dogs out of the car and is letting them roam a stretch of a grass bleached yellow by the summer. They’re so well trained that they're without their leashes leaving Tyler free to stretch out in the morning sun. He had one hand up toward the sun tightening the muscles of his back under a thin white shirt. Jamie smiles to himself, enjoying the view before setting up the pump. 

 

The morning is warm, but not the oppressive heat that the day will bring. It's nice to stand outside and breath in the relative quiet of being away from the city. Jamie wonders, briefly, if he was missing something all these years by not leaving the confines of Dallas all that much. 

 

Something wet nudges against his hand. He looks down to find Cash looking up at him, tongue lolling out of the side of his mouth in a happy grin. Jamie kneels to rub his ears and before long is mobbed by the other two as well. Jamie laughs, arms full and off balance. 

 

“Dirty pool, Benn.” Tyler chuckles, somehow brighter in the sunlight than he was under stadium lights. Jamie grins and then hid the bubbly feeling in Cash’s soft fur. 

 

“You hungry? I hear there's breakfast in town?”

 

Tyler shrugs and that’s answer enough.

 

* * *

  
  


“In town” turns out to be a collection of four or five buildings laid out on either side of a main street. One of them is a dinner. They’re shown to a corner booth and they squeeze in next to each other. 

 

“No NHL.” Jamie reminds Tyler when he pulls out his phone after they order. 

 

“I remember, Cap.” Jamie winches and Tyler sighs, but shoulders past it. “I’m just checking messages.”

 

Jamie nods. He supposes doing that is better than mopping about a nickname that wounds now, so he pulls out his own and snorts at what he finds. 

 

“Jordie’s worried about us.”

 

Tyler laughs, bright and loud. “He does know we’re adults right?”

 

“You think he cares?”

 

“No I don’t.” Tyler snickers. 

 

Pancakes, waffles, eggs, bacon, biscuits and gravy all appear at the table. They dig in sharing a little bit of everything. It's all good in that simple way that good food is. Solid and filling and warm. Tyler takes a quick video with no details to give them away on instagram. Jamie is content to wrap his ankle around Tyler’s under the table.

 

* * *

 

They stop that night at the New Mexico border. There’s a run down little motel that takes the animals. They eat tex-mex and wonder if there are tacos as good somewhere that isn’t Texas. Something about this makes Tyler sad and Jamie spends the rest of the dinner trying to make him smile again. 

 

After dinner they collect the dogs and go for a walk. It's a small town so they end up a little bit off the beaten track. Everything is so flat out here you can see for miles and miles so Jamie isn’t too worried about getting lost. 

 

Maybe it's how foreign the flatness feels, or how nothing out here is familiar, but like a different world. They can breath out here and not have to think about anything else. Its nice. 

 

Jamie reaches out while they’re walking and tangles his fingers up with Tyler’s. It's a dangerous thing and not normally something he would allow, but there is no one out here but them, the dogs, and the sunset. 

 

“Day one.” Tyler sighs, swinging their hands, a small smile tugging at the corner of his lips. “How do you feel?”

 

“Lost.” Jamie sighs looking across at the flat empty land stretching to the orange and purple horizon, and then to Tyler, curls highlighted with blond and brown eyes wide and contented. “But in the best way.”

 


	2. Cause This Road's Been Putting Miles On My Heart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No all of New Mexico is no White Sands. But White Sands is the most liminal place I have ever been in my entire life. 
> 
> Unbeted. All mistakes Mine.

**2\. Cause This Road’s Been Putting Miles On My Heart**

  
  


Jamie woke up first, blinking slowly into the dark of the hotel room. Tyler is somehow both curled under his arm and on top. Jamie is too tired still to work out the tangle. Marshall, Cash, and Gerry are all up in the bed with them too and Snickers has clammed Tyler’s pillow. Space is non-existent and Jamie really misses his California king. 

 

He takes a moment to study Tyler in the dim light, sound asleep still. Soft curls fall over his forehead which Jamie smooths away. Tyler smiles while still asleep and something warm and fragile flutters in Jamie’s heart. He’s seen Tyler smile before. He’s seen taunting media grins and soft smiles for fans, but he’s one of the few who’s gotten to see Tyler asleep, all bare skin and dark ink and gotten him to smile just by touching him. 

 

He kisses his shoulder and carefully extracts himself from the bed tangle. Tyler wines and clutches Jamie’s pillow before settling again. Jamie rolls his eyes before getting the dogs up and leashed. Its cooler outside than he’s expecting, the desert causing it get cold at night even though it's hot during the day. With the sun only just coming over the horizon the chill still has a grip on the land and the lonely stands of buildings. 

 

Jamie lets the dogs do their business and then takes off into a run the dogs eagerly join. After being in the car all day yesterday the dogs are ready to move. Jamie feels better too, moving, breathing, focusing on the unfamiliar landscape and his own heart rate. It feels good to sink into his skin and not think for a little bit. He’d promised to call his brother and parents that morning and there’s probably a dozen other things that he needs to pay attention too, but the entire point of this was focus on them and Jamie wants to try. 

 

Tyler is right there, but for a long time it had seemed like they were disant. If nothing else the whole situation over the summer had thrown them back in sync. Jamie wishes he had noticed it sooner. It might would have saved them some trouble. 

 

Or maybe it wouldn’t have. Maybe it would have always lead here. 

 

He completes the loop back to the hotel and pauses outside their door, braced on his knees and breathing deep. It's getting harder, the pushing himself to his physical limits. At some point he’s going to have to face it. Sometime probably sooner than he’s ready for. 

 

He makes himself straighten up and go back into their room. Tyler doesn’t need to know. 

 

Said man is now starfished across the bed on his back. The cat had relocated from the pillow to his chest. The soft grey fur contrasted nicely with Tyler’s pale skin and the dark ink spreading across it. Jamie smiles at the view, pleased to know that Tyler is still asleep. The dark circles around his eyes that showed the last couple of months worried him. 

 

At the same time it’s time to get a move on. 

 

“Wake up, Ty.” Jamie calls, releasing the dogs. Gerry bolts straight for the bed, startling snickers and jolting Tyler awake. “Burning daylight.”

 

“Could you sound more like John Wayne?” Tyler grunts, threading his fingers into Gerry’s soft fur. Jamie chuckles and tugs his shirt over his head. “Did you guys go running? You should have woken me up.”

 

“You needed to sleep.” Jamie shrugs and smiles catching the edge of Tyler’s lopsided one in return. “I’m gonna get a quick shower and then we can find some breakfast?”

 

Tyler nods and their day begins.

 

* * *

 

They opt for the free breakfast at the hotel and then load up the car. Tyler takes the dogs for one last quick jog while Jamie checks out. By the time he gets back to the car Tyler has the dogs in the back  and is giving them a few last cuddles until they stop the next time. Jamie joins in, checking on Snickers in her crate too before helping Tyler close the back door. He goes to head back to the drivers side, but Tyler grabs his wrist holding him in place. 

 

There’s something wild and unsettled in his eyes that makes Jamie sit on the bumper. He lets Tyler’s fingers slide down his arm till he can hold his hand, squeezing gently to reassure him. “Whats up?”

 

Tyler sighs heavily and sinks. All the confidence and assurity that he carries like a second skin bleeds out of him leaving Tyler small and folded in on himself. It's a feeling Jamie knows well, but hates to think that anyone else feels, especially someone as normally full of life as Tyler is. It isn’t a kind feeling he knows, to be reduced to only the shell of who are are.

 

“Its finally hitting you isn’t it?”

 

Tyler shrugs, his eyes glued to his hands in his lap. “I thought I knew what to expect. I can be mad and bitter and annoyed and pissed off and use all of that to force myself forward. But that’s not what I’m feeling. This isn’t like Boston. I’m just sad. I thought Dallas was going to be home and it’s not. We’re crossing the border and I know we’ll be back, but rather than be mad about everything I’m empty.”

 

There’s an apology on the tip of Jamie’s tongue that almost slips out, but he knows it won’t do any good for Tyler. It’ll just make him roll his eyes and act again because he takes care of Jamie. And Jamie takes care of Tyler. He knows no other way to be. Tyler sinks into him when Jamie drapes his arm around Tyler’s shoulders, sharing each other’s warmth even though the desert is already quickly returning to heat. 

 

“I know, this wasn’t either of our plans.” Jamie starts awkward and then Tyler snorts and he has to laugh a little. “Understatement I know and it’s not fair and I don’t know what to say to make you feel better. Mainly because I don’t know how to make myself feel better. For all I know its not any better where we’re going, but you got me and I’m feeling just as worn out and empty as you are. We’re in this together.”

 

“That does kinda make this better.” Tyler looks up, the start of a smile on his heart shatteringly beautiful face. “You and me.”

 

“Exactly.” Jamie looks around briefly, making sure that no one is around to see them, and briefly brushed his lips against Tyler’s. “You ready to go?”

 

“Yeah.” Tyler nods and pushes himself up from the bumper. He’s not sinking into himself anymore, standing tall and straight in the morning sun. Jamie appreciates the view and gets up to join him.

 

* * *

 

New Mexico continued the theme of flatness, but now instead of burnt summer grass its sand bleached so long in the sun that its almost white. It's a barren wasteland of miles and miles of highway stretching into the distance and the vague shapes of mountains beyond. The only signs of life where the prints in the sand when they stopped to let the dogs run and the lonely little gas stations with their signs of miles to the next gas station. 

 

For all its barren coldness, however, there’s something enthralling about the plain stretching into oblivion. Something beautiful and terrifying that spoke more to sound and feel than just what could be seen with the eyes. The white sand reflects the sunlight like a sea of glass stinging Jamie’s eyes even from the protective carcass of the SUV. It's a foreign plain of existence at once too big and too empty to be real. 

 

And all day the mountains crept closer. 

 

Tyler starts the morning in the passenger seat, unbuckled no matter the bitching at him Jamie does. He’s taken control of the stereo as the miles of the white sand and blue sky goes by he picks songs to play on his phone. Every other song is clearly chosen to piss Jamie off as Tyler grins and sings long. Jamie sighs and shakes his head, playing along good naturally because Tyler is grinning and happy. He talks to the dogs as they move around in the back and even takes Snickers out of the crate and let her sit in his lap occasionally. 

 

Tyler takes a video out the window and puts it on his instagram while Jamie rolls his eyes. 

 

“Why do you do that?”

 

Tyler shrugs, unbothered one hand strolling through his phone and the other remains curled into the cat’s soft fur. He turns so that his back is against the door and his feet are on the center console. Pilates may have been the best thing Tyler ever did, but Jamie still wishes he would sit right and buckle up.

 

“Pretty sure we’re the only ones for a hundred miles. If someone stops us and then kills us in the desert I want someone to know where we were.”

 

“You’ve been watching too much Breaking Bad.” 

 

Tyler grins.

 

After a while Tyler gets bored with his game and settles on the Tragically Hip. Jamie at once wants to request more and beg him to stop too. The Hip remind of home, of the Pacific Ocean wide and infinite outside his backyard and the peaceful calm of the Island. It reminds him of when Jordie got his first car and they would drive around town and out into the backroads, both brothers drunk on their first taste of freedom. It opens up a longing wound in his chest for the easy, uncomplicated childhood he can never return too. 

 

He wonders if it does the same to Tyler, who stares out at the barren white sand stretching before them. He isn’t entirely sure Tyler is all here with him, and not hundreds of miles and years away from him. They had very different upbringings, but some things never changed. Uncomplicated joy, a longing to go back, and the Tragically Hip to soundtrack it all. 

 

* * *

  
When the sun is overhead they stop at a Luvs for gas and lunch. It’s the most people they’ve seen in a while and Jamie is surprised to find it feels a little strange. They sit on a road stop picnic table with their feet on the bench and the dogs sniffing out smells in the sand. No one bothers them, no one approaches to ask for autographs, or ask about trades and how it feels to be leaving their team. 

 

It fucking sucks is the only answer he’s been able to come up with. 

 

They are about as fair from hockey country as one can get and it feels a little like it had as a teenager in Jordie’s car. 

 

On a whim he tells Tyler a story about one of those times when they missed curfew staying out too late at a beach smoking. It had been before Jamie draft and he hadn’t thought about it in years. Tyler smiles, pokes, teases and prods. The desert sun catching his honeyed curls. He looks like fire, like some young trickster god at the dawn of the universe, bright and untroubled. Jamie knows he looks a little odd, to large, too unproportioned, but if Tyler is a god then Jamie is the honest devotee, following him across a new and unformed world. And that Jamie is more than okay with. 

 

They’re late getting back on the road because Jamie pulls Tyler close to taste the honey and chocolate from his lips. They’re fully in view of anyone who happens by and Jamie doesn’t care. Nothing out here feels real, so what does it matter if Jamie wants to lose himself in the silk of Tyler’s curls between his fingers, the little puffs of breaths, the tingle of bruised and well used lips, the radiating heat of skin against skin? It’s kisses that aren’t going anywhere, aren’t leading up to anything and that’s okay. It's the simple pleasure of having and holding and being. And Jamie never wants to let go. 

 

Tyler takes over this shift of driving growing closer to the mountains rising ever steady in the nearer horizon, purple and blue. Jamie naps for a little bit, falling asleep to the sound of Tyler singing along to the a happy, silly love song. 

 

When he wakes up the the music is turned down, hushed and background. The dogs are oddly quiet in the back, and Tyler is gripping the steering wheel tightly like he’s afraid he’s about to lose control. It’s the sound that makes him realize the biggest change, a loud startling crack and a flash of light so intense it's blinding. The lightning sounds like it landed just next to the SUV. The sunshine has been replaced a deep a dark. The clouds are low, a deep inky grey and wind and rain lashes them. 

 

The lightning strikes again, somehow closer and louder than before, stealing the air from Jamie’s lungs in a panicked, primitive moment. 

 

Because the thunder that rolls over a desert in the heart of the dry season has a power all its own and humans learned when they first came out of the ooze to fear it and respect it. 

 

Jamie sits up straight, reaches out to hook his hand around Tyler thigh, a firm, weighty anchor. Tyler breaths, but doesn’t take his eyes from the road, from the wipers working double time to clear away the wet. The looming mountains are completely hidden from view. The only thing visible is the few feet of the headlamps before the light is swallowed by the rain. Tyler doesn’t loosen the white knuckled hold on the steering wheel, but he breaths slow and steady. 

 

“It’s okay.” Jamie says, though he isn’t sure how he sounds so calm. How can he even be heard over the anger of the skies on a dry and barren land? “Just keep going. It has to run out at some point.”

 

Tyler nods, but does not seem convinced. 

 

Dallas has thunderstorms. In the spring sometimes it was like the sky wanted vengeance for a mild winter and its answer was rain and hail and tornadoes and lightning that split everything apart. This is like one of those, only somehow worse. Somehow less controlled. Every few seconds the cab lite up again and again and again. Each crash and boom is louder than the last and shudders the massive bulk of the SUV. Jamie has never been afraid of the dark, or lightning, or the thunder, but his heart still races in chest, because this is danger of a primitive, immortal kind. 

 

Somehow, someway the rain gets worse, harder, faster, and turning the road beneath them into a steady stream of water. Each new crash, coming barely seconds apart now, makes them both jump. Tyler is struggling with the wheel, trying not to jerk it to hard every time the lightning crashes in around them. 

 

“Tyler pullover.” Jamie urges, squeezing Tyler’s thigh in support as he tries to move the car somewhere safe and come to a stop. He hasn’t realized how much noise the car made until the ignition is turned off and suddenly it's nothing but the rain and wind and thunder and lightning. Jamie is a thirty year old man, he knows he shouldn’t be so scared of a little lightning, but the all encompassing power of the weather has reduced him to his base matter. That of being alone and scared in the dark. 

 

Tyler scrambles, trying to get across the center. There should be something humorous about a six foot one hockey player trying to cross a car, but Jamie gets it. There’s something in him that relaxes when Tyler finailly falls into his lap. He curls up, face hidden in Jamie’s chest as he trembles. Jamie wraps both arms around Tyler’s shaking frame and puts his head down in Tyler’s curls and waits out the storm. 

 

It seems like it takes forever it to burn itself out or roll by, but a glance at the clock confirms that it's barely been fifteen minutes. It's still raining, but not as bad and the thunder is growing more distant. Jamie sighs, feeling locked muscles slowly relax. 

 

“That was shit.” Tyler mumbles, barely moving. “Thank god there isn’t a team in New Mexico.”

 

Jamie laughs harder than he should. Tyler does too, but it fades quickly. They don’t separate, don’t move, remain locked in together and breathing in the same air. Tyler feels firm, right in his arms even if they're crammed into the front seat of a car. 

 

He’s reminded again of Jordie and that first car, of girlfriend kissed in the back seat, the brothers trekking to and from hockey and baseball practice, just being bored and driving. He and Tyler have never gotten that. They’ve always been what they had to be, flawless and leaders and the kind of people that looked good in ads. They never got to do the things that young people in love did. They hadn’t gotten to walk down the street hand in hand, they didn’t get to kiss in the rain, or look sickenly, disgustingly in love over a candle light dinner. 

 

They are what they are, but they don’t have to be anymore. They’re on a roadside in New Mexico, in the middle of nowhere, having survived the wrath of a summer storm. They can be anything they want to. 

 

Jamie tips Tyler’s chin up and kisses his lips, until the world melts away because it doesn’t matter. Just him and Tyler. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from Zac Brown Band's Sweet Annie


	3. Coming Home to a Place He'd Never Been Before

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> don't do this at home blah blah blah
> 
> this chapter is a little brighter? Hopefully that works.

**3\. Coming Home to Place He’d Never Been Before**

  
  


It’s like it happens in the blink of eye. White sand and the barren emptiness is suddenly giving way to the thick forest green and pale grey rock of the steps of the Great Rocky Mountains. Jamie and Tyler’s ears pop as they climb. Tyler rolls down a window, his arm outside playing in the breeze. The highway is choked with cars and people and just life everywhere. 

 

After a day of the relative loneliness it's a strange feeling to hit cities and trees and the noise of a mountain range choked with life. The dogs clearly love getting out of the car and sniffing around while Jamie pumps gas and excitedly barking at things they see out the windows. 

 

It’s life all around them. Sweet and colored with the bright tones of a late summer still fighting against the approaching autumn. 

 

Tyler smiles more today than yesterday, caught up in the rush. His pale skin is tanned underneath the layers of ink, golden in the sunshine. He keeps up a constant stream of chatter and excited exclamations. 

 

Each new bend in the highway reveals a new peak or valley or shade of green and blue. 

 

Denver is actually out of their way, but as soon as Jamie had told Tyson of their plans his friend had insisted that they stop by. The sun is starting to slip behind the mountains by the time they reach the bustling metropolis thriving on the peaks. The Barrie-Landeskog house looks much more inviting than another night in hotel, Jamie will admit. Getting pulled into a hug by one of his oldest friends feels even better. 

 

“You guys didn’t eat yet, right?” Tyson says while saying hello to Marshall, Cash, and Gerry. “Gab’s cooking.”

 

“Just tell me isn’t hashbrown or chili.” Tyler snickers. 

 

“Or hamburgers. Or chicken fried steak.”

 

“Diner food getting ya down?” Tys snickered. 

 

“I have a figure to maintain.” Tyler complains loudly and Jamie laughs

 

Dinner is grilled chicken, salad, veggies, and wholy on their diet plans. It's a nice change to greasy diner food. The company is good too. Tys and Jamie spend most of the night catching up, Gabe and Tyler joining in octionally. They linger over beers talking about home and their families. There’s a hint of longing in both their voices, but also the honest realization that there is no real going back for them. They’ve both figured out home for themselves in the absence and done a good job of it. 

 

And it's nice to fall asleep in a bed that doesn’t belong to a hotel. 

 

* * *

 

In the morning Tyler opts to go train with Gab, which the Swed seems less than enthusiastic about, but it leaves Tyson and Jamie room to do whatever they want. 

 

Jamie thinks he should have seen Dairy Queen coming. That used to be their thing when they were idiot kids away from home for the time. It had been part loneliness and part homesickness and more than anything had been what they needed at the time. Before the Stars and the Avalanche and Nate, Gab, and Tyler, it had been just Jamie and Tyson and Tyson unquenchable sweet tooth. 

 

It had been one of the things Jamie loved about him. 

 

“Hey, remember when you crashed into that snow drift taking me back to my bilots house after one of our dairy queen dates?” Tyson grins, sliding into a booth.

 

“My brand new truck?” Jamie points out, leaning in across the table. “That I just bought? And was or wasn’t you who wanted to try to get me off while I was driving?”

 

“Um, guilty.” Tyson giggles, a blush painting his cheeks. “I can’t help it. You were cute all proud of that stupid truck.”

 

“It was the first thing I bought off contract money.” It was the first thing he bought after the Stars started paying him, and that thought sobers him a little. Tyson must notice because he smiles sympathiticly and nudges his ankle underneath the table. 

 

“How you doing?” he asks, before taking a bite of blizzard. A wild, loose part of Jamie’s brain wonders if it tastes as sweet now as it did when they were kids. 

 

“I’m fine. It’s not what I was planning on doing this summer, but we don’t all get what we want.”

 

“I mean, that’s kinda bullshit.” Tyson’s eyes narrow and Jamie squirms a little his seat. He forgets sometimes that Tyson plays a good act, but he’s pretty perspective. Sometimes too perceptive. “Don’t lie to me. I know what the Stars meant to you. That team was your everything.”

 

“Tyler is my everything.” Jamie says with a sigh and then is afraid that it sounds like he regrets that so he hurries on. “I mean, yeah, the team has been my life for a decade, but Tyler is more important. If he’s not going to be respected somewhere then I’m following him.”

 

Tys shrugs, not judging. “I get that I think, but is it really all for Tyler’s benefit?”

 

Jamie raises one shoulder. Tyson waits in expectation and Jamie finailly sighs. “I might not have done it without Tyler. What else do you want me to say?”

 

“Sounds more like you.”

 

Jamie snorts. “It’s, it was, home. I wanted to do everything there. That’s not idiotic is it?”

 

“No.” Tyson shakes his head and is sympathetic at least. “I mean, I get it. Gab, and Nate, and the rest of us, we want to win, but we want to do here most of all. That being said, I’m glad you did was best for you.”

 

“It sucks.”

 

“Yeah. Tell me about road tripping. Is Tyler as annoying in a car as always?”

 

Jamie laughs and defends Tyler like he’s supposed to. He tells Tyson that’s been nice, the uninterrupted time with Tyler. He tries to explain how New Mexico had felt, vast and empty and strange. He tells the story of the storm and how Tyler had ended up squished into his lap while the world tore itself apart around them. 

 

“I’m worried about him.”

 

“Tyler?”

 

Jamie nods. He isn’t necessarily comfortable talking about his relationship. Tyson had been his first with guys and although they aren’t like that anymore it always rested between them. But Tyson liked Tyler too and Jamie trusts him. He and Gab had at least made it work in similar circumstances. If anyone had good advice it would be Tyson. 

 

“He’s really good at lying and putting on a happy face. He tells me he’s fine and looking forward to a fresh start, but I’ve seen him like this before. Boston chucked him away and he wasn’t okay not matter what he pretended. I just don’t him to have to go through that again, but we’re here anyway. He just deserves better.”

 

“Is it possible that he really is okay?” Jamie gave him  a withering glance. “Okay, okay, maybe not okay, but maybe handling this? Maybe you’re the one thinking about Boston.”

 

“Fuck off, Barrie.”

 

“Didn’t think you were into me like that anymore.” Jamie snorts and rolls his eyes. “I don’t know what to tell you, Jamie. I think the best you can best you can do is just be there, which is probably why he wanted to do this whole trip with you. It’s the two of you in this now. Not that it hasn’t been like that forever but...”

 

“No, I get it.” They’d been weird and a little distant over the summer too. Maybe Tyson is right and they both just need some time before the weirdest season of their lives started.

 

* * *

 

When they get back to the house Tyler is playing with the dogs on the front yard. 

 

“Yes, Tyler!” Tyson cheered enthusiastically as they got out of the car. “Wear Zoey out.”

 

Tyler laughs and affectionately rubs the dog’s ears before it runs of to greet Tyson. Gerry and Cash collide into Jamie’s legs, forcing him to kneel and hug on them for a moment. Tyler, sitting with his ass in the grass and leaning on Marshall, grins over at him, brown eyes big, sweet, and sparkling. Jamie smiles back feeling something light and bubbly in his stomach. He hides his face in Cash’s fur to combat the feeling. 

 

When he looks back up Tyson is making a face at him and not so subtly nodding his head toward Tyler. Jamie sticks his tongue out at his nosey friend. 

 

“You wanna go for a hike?” Jamie askes Tyler, because Tyson is annoying, but he isn’t wrong either. “Tys says there some places nearby?”

 

“Sure.” Tyler shrugs and levers himself back to his feet with a groan. 

 

“Getting old, Segs?” Tyson giggles and Tyler shoots him a middle finger. Jamie rolls his eyes at both of them.

 

Tyson and Gab agree to keep the dogs and the cat for a couple hours so Jamie and Tyler hit a trail only a couple blocks away from the house. It’s nice to be out of the house and the car and out in the sunshine. The trail is thickly wooded, hiding the fact that they started in an urban area of Denver. Within minutes civilization has disappeared and it just the mountain slope around them. Tyler tangles his fingers against Jamie’s as they walk and Jamie squeezes back.

 

“Colorado is kinda nice.” Tyler says appreciatively. “I could have gotten used to this.’

 

Jamie allows himself to imagine it, Denver being the end of the road. Maybe getting a house in Tyson and Gab’s neighborhood, playing home games at the Pepsi Center. He can admit it wouldn’t have been bad. “You thinking of leaving me already?” He teases instead of getting too morose. 

 

“For the Tyson, Gab, and Nate show? Not a chance.” Tyler snickers. “Turns out I kinda like you.”

 

It’s supposed to just be part of the joke, but some kind of thick emotion clogs up Jamie’s throat. He’s not going to cry, that’s not it at all, but Tyler steps a little closer, a warm solid line against his shoulder and a reminder that Tyler choose uncertainty and change rather than a life without Jamie. That’s overwhelming and wonderful. 

 

At a bend in the trail, where they can hear a river somewhere close by, Jamie pulls Tyler off the worn path and into the trees. The younger man laughs, but cuddles close. “You’re not dragging me off into the woods to kill me are you?”

 

“Course not.’ Jamie snorts. “Tyson knows where we went. It's too obvious.”

 

“How do I know Tyson isn’t part of this?”

 

Jamie growls, pulls Tyler flush against his front, and nips his lips and teeth up the column of Tyler’s throat until Tyler is panting against his ear. “Think Tyson is involved now?”

 

“God I hope not.”

 

They both break down into helpless laughter, clutching each other to stay on their feet. 

 

Eventually Jamie pulls them forward again till they break through the tree line. Before them the land split in two with a river running in the small canyon between. The sun is still bright overhead, making the green and greys vibrant. There’s a spot they can sit and let their legs dangle over the side. 

 

Jamie digs around his pocket and pulls out a tightly rolled joint. Tyler snuggles up against his side, vibrating with excitement. “I wondered if you had a plan.”

 

Jamie shrugs. “There was a store by the Dairy Queen and this is apparently Tyson and Gabe’s spot. It’s still a month before we need to report so what the hell.”

 

“You don’t have to convince me. Thank god for Colorado.”

 

Jamie nods, quickly lighting the joint, feeling the smoke and spicey smell sink into his veins. He blows out slowly watching the cloud dissipate in the wind, before breathing in another. Tyler is already leaning against his shoulder, waiting for Jamie lean over and seal their lips, sharing the breath. Tyler’s eyelashes flutter closed and before Jamie is pulling away he’s already sinking boneless into Jamie’s warmth. 

 

Tyler is distracting in the best way. He kicks his long legs like a child on a swing. As they share a few more hits his eyes grow big and dark, sweet and soft. The sun is playing in his hair, twisting the brown curls into shades of blond and red. His cheeks, which Jamie can’t help tracing with his fingertips, are pink. 

 

Jamie isn’t aware of when it goes from shotgunning to kissing. It just happens between one breath and the next. Tyler is pliant and open, his fingers gripping Jamie’s biceps like he’s not sure he can hold himself up. Jamie isn’t sure either, but he’s too deep to care. The joint is lost somewhere on the rocks beside them. It’s just Tyler in his arms, every inch like a fire brand Jamie can’t get enough of. The world ceases to be all that important. 

 

They stop when they need to breath, but even then Jaime can’t bring himself to move to far away, nuzzling his nose into into fire colored curls and rubbing his arms up Tyler’s black printed skin, marveling in his hazy mind on the feeling. 

 

Tyler’s fingers tremble up Jamie’s neck, fluttering against Jaime’s beard. He giggles and a blinding, answering smile breaks across Tyler’s face. The river churns along below them, but they’re caught up in their own current. 

 

“Hey, Jamie?” Tyler askes, voice deeper, rougher than normal. There’s something in his eyes that sets Jamie on edge, brings every protective urge he has to the surface. He gathers Tyler up in his arms, holding him tight and safe. He almost misses the question, said as it is into the skin of Jamie’s neck where Tyler has taken up residence. “Are you happy?”

 

Jamie blinks slowly, muddling through his thoughts. He doesn’t think he would normally be honest with a question like that, but maybe its the high that makes him admit, “No, but I think I will be. I’ve got you.”

 

Jamie feels Tyler’s answering smile against his lips. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from Rockey Mountain High by John Denver


End file.
